Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Before You Marry It's Time To Get Financially Naked

With the statistics of divorce in this country, more than ever we must better prepare for the big step of marriage. There is a lot to do before the big day. The list is long with all the things that need to be arranged. The preacher, the hall the church, the caterer and on and on. Lots of time is needed to get all this done. We can't forget to be sure we are preparing our financial lives together, also.

With all the rushing around be sure you give yourself the time and space to talk frankly about your financial philosophies. With financial conflicts still among the chief reasons for divorce, it's critical.

You need to talk over all the obvious questions like, How are we paying for the wedding? Should we combine our accounts? What if one of us gets laid off? Those are the easy questions to ask. You need to dig deeper into philosophical questions. Is your future wife a clothes maven with a hundred pairs of shoes? Is the husband a car freak that will only drive a BMW? These things are cute when your dating your future spouse. But if your future love has spending problems, you need to know before the big day.

A thorough pre-marital counseling is imperative to work all the bugs out. You owe it to your future spouse to expose all your crazy spending habits, turn over all the cards and get financially naked.

There are so many facets of life to touch on during counseling you will only be able to touch on the very important ones. One of them being your future home together. Does one person want a small 3 bedroom house and the other want a lavish 2 story McMansion. When the kids arrive is it public or private school. Religious school or home school. What about vacations? will it be Hawaii or North Carolina?


Counselors ask piercing questions to get an answer from your soul, for example:


Imagine the Best. You have enough money to take care of your needs, now and in the future. How would you live your life? Would you change anything?


Life Cut Short. Now the doctor says you have only 5 to 10 years to live. You won't feel sick, but you'll never know when death will come. What will you do? Will you change your life? How?

Regrets. Now imagine that your doctor says you only have one day to live. Ask yourself: What did I miss? What did I not get to be or do?

With these sample questions, your philosophy comes out. You really get to know how your future spouse ticks. Today people are more careful with their money. If they don't know their future spouse well enough an anxiety about their future behavior arises. This leads to mistrust. A sign of this mistrust is the use of Pre-nup agreements. They are used to protect assets in case of divorce. This is a big red flag that your marrying someone you don't trust.

The action that needs to be taken is, if your engaged to marry,  get a good financial marriage counselor to help you better prepare for the big step your about to take.



1 comment:

  1. Sounds kinky. It can be a nightmare to marry someone only to find out afterwards their financial life is a wreck and now you are jointly responsible for cleaning it up.

    ReplyDelete


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